Marine Tondelier on DPI-A and IVF Access, Digi Mart USA News (France): In a long testimony published on X and relayed by Le Parisien, Ecologist national secretary Marine Tondelier spoke about the years before the birth of her son Léon, born September 18. Marking World Fertility Day, the presidential candidate described the hardships she faced during her IVF journey.
Tondelier wrote that she spoke out “so that it is finally authorized,” referring to preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A), which is currently banned in France. She said that over three years she went through a series of difficulties during an unsuccessful IVF process, including several miscarriages and repeated tests aimed at understanding the causes.
She said the strain eventually took a serious toll on her daily life. “I had reached my limits,” she said, adding, “I no longer recognized my body or my mood.”
After the examinations carried out in France failed to provide an explanation, Tondelier said she learned about PGT-A, a technique that analyzes the chromosomes of an embryo before implantation to detect certain chromosomal abnormalities. “I used an examination banned in France,” she said.
She argued that this option could have helped her better understand her case.
“All the tests I had done accounted for 20% of the possible causes of failure. And the remaining 80%?
They come from the embryos. But in France, we are not allowed to investigate in that direction,” she said.
To access the test, she traveled to Belgium, where it is permitted, at a cost of at least 10,000 euros. She said the results were significant: “Of the five embryos I had analyzed, three were not viable.
That would have meant as many cycles of hormones, blood and gynecological tests, weight gain, mood changes, stress and waiting.”
After that experience, her IVF project was paused for one year. A few weeks later, she said, she discovered she was naturally pregnant, “on Christmas Eve.”
In sharing her story, Tondelier, who has faced criticism over her maternity leave, aims to revive the debate over access to PGT-A in France. “If I speak today, at the risk of exposing myself to a host of unpleasant comments, it is because I know that many women have similar experiences and ask the same questions,” she said.
A cross-party bill on the subject was filed in the National Assembly on October 13 by deputy Liot Constance de Pélichy. The text would limit use of the test to specific situations, including when the woman is over 35, after repeated implantation failures, after several miscarriages, or when an increased risk of aneuploidy is identified.
It would also prohibit using PGT-A to select a child’s sex or other genetic characteristics.
